FujiFilm S1600 Long Term Review
1. Background
Earlier I mentioned that ths S1600 was purchased as a present
for my wife in an ealier
article where
I traced the evolution of the camera. About a year after that
posting Fujifilm introduced the X10 that addressed about all
the concerns
I had regarding a better image quality (i.e. larger low noise sensor)
and putting on a manually controlled zoom lens.
Although the camera was bought on Jan 1 2011, it has been missing for
the last 8 months (as of May 2 2012) where it sat on top of a
bookshelf at a friend's house beside his dusty stuffed smallmouth bass...
yes...a true story..
2. A Keeper
I mention this because the other cameras got used seldomly except for
the birthdays of nieces and nephews. Exactly 24 hours after the S1600
made it back into my hands, I had managed to shoot about 64 pictues
of random objects just to see those amazing colours/tone of the Fujifilm
corporation. As I have taken a sabbatical from this camera for about 8 months,
I began wondering if other photographers have come across the wonders of
the S1600: To sum up:
Let me explain: The Canon AE-1 pioneered the use of high strength plastics,
metal parts used for gears. Ultimately, these will compromise
the long term life of a mechanical camera but not a digital camera.
In a digital camera, there are few moving parts except for the mechanicals
used for the lens elements as the camera zooms and focuses.
The S1600 is built out of Polycarbonate and I happen to like this
material for its lightweight, lack of scuffing, and comfort to touch
resulting from the lack of conducting external heat and cold. While some
may yearn for magnesium and titanium (i.e. metal), I find the strategic
use of Polycarbonate to be a plus. Even the non-metal mode dial (plastic ?)
is fine by me. I bring this up because I have a proposition to make to
Fujifilm for the improving the low cost S1600 by marrying it to some
of the virtues of the X10.
As you can well tell, I am a bit of a Fuji/Fujica/Fujifilm fan boy and
this became even more evident when I found someone named
Harris Hui on Flickr and his S1600 specific
gallery of pictures...they are a must see in terms of composition
and it really shows off that "Fuji Look".
3.
S1600
Fujifilm has made the industry stand up and take a look at itself by producing
the X10. Using a sensor with half the diagonal of the Four-Thirds format (twice the
crop factor at a value of 4 and 1/4 the area) but with an area 3x larger than
the 1/2.3" format commonly used in the lowest cost point and shoot cameras.
I have not been a big fan of the evolution changes chosen by Fujifilm for
their bridge cameras (S-series).. They have gone after the low hanging fruit for their
marketing department and caved into "the larger the number...the better mentality"
that was pervasive several years ago in the megapixel wars. So the changes
have been to go after better video and larger zoom ratios (30x anyone). Why can they do
one of either ofthe following:
Path One Path Two Specifically:
4. S1600: Poor Man's X10
The X10 despite ongoing issues with blooming (that are on the verge of being
solved) has been a commercial success for Fujifilm.
are to the S1600. In many ways, I hope X10 draws attention back to the S1600
camera, so that if you cannot afford the cost of luxury in the X10, you can
have a poor man's version in the S1600. Ironically, this comes
with the addition of a wider range zoom and a EVF not found on the X10.
One of the neatest features of the camera are the "instant zoom crop" and the
one button "silent mode" where the beeps, focus lights, and simulated shutter
sounds are disable. Think of this a stealth mode.
Due to the similarity in the GUI interface, picking up an inexpensive Fujifilm
bridge camera will give you very similar displays and I think you be surprised
at how much fun you will have with this camera...so much that you will look forward
to using all your learnt skills on the X10...whenever you get to that point.
5. Thoughts on Sensor Size
There are a number of interesting sights for the advancing
user of digital cameras. You can run the gambit of
Ken Rockwell to Thom Hogan.
They both offer useful advice: The former by a somewhat jaded salesman
that used to rent expensive gear to Hollywood types and the other from
an experienced designer of micro-controller based products who is an
bona-fide and recognized photographer.
I've come across three other sites that I have found facinating
So how does this all related to the sensor size ? To get a grip
on this, we need to look a light as particles (photons), to view
sensors like little light buckets, and to get a grip on
the tradeoffs (and gains) in moving toward smaller sensors.
In both cases, for a given time exposure of the sensor,
the number of photons collected will be the same each respective pixel
covereing the same arc of light for both the near sensor and the
far sensor. As we move from the near sensor to the far sensor,
the spreading
of light will result in width and height of the pixel of the far sensor
will increased to twice that of the respective near sensor:
This results in the flood of electrons to land on four times the
area of the near sensor.. If a flood of 10,000 photons completely
filled the span of the smaller
near sensor pixel, the larger "far sensor" would only be 25% full.
It is useful to make the analogy of a bucket of water filled , for 2
seconds,
by a hose placed directly on the bucket compared to four buckets
placed 2x2 and filled, for the same amount of time, but with the
hose place a distance away so that a diverging spray of the same volume
(i.e. one bucket) being shared resulting in each being only 25% full.
Total volume of water is the same in both cases and is equal to one
bucket of water.
The far sensor would have a "volume" 4x as large by virtue of
the area increase: Looked at another way, four of the near
pixels would span the same area as the far pixel.
These 10,000 photons would need to shared out
across the larger pixel area so that for a given
area the size of the smaller near pixel, only 2,500
photons would found.
It is this intensity that determines
the exposure level.
For a given lens opening (fixed in the above example),
the "exposure" or intensity (of photons/unit area) was
found decrease by four for each doubling of the lens
opening to sensor distance. For pinhole cameras, this
is known as the focal length. The notation f/2 states
that the diameter of the lens opening is
fractional half (f-1/2) of the focal length. Thus
f/4 implies that the opening is one fourth the
focal length (in diameter) and smaller than f/2.
As the area of the opening varies as the "dimension squared",
we can expect the f/4 to be 4x smaller that f/2 and
the number of photons to decrease by a factor of 4.
The one thing about a successful camera design, whatever the user,
is that the camera gets used. This is more noticeable by those who
own more than one camera where, invariably, one camera gets left
home to gather dust and the other camera gets used. The following
are my long term thougts on the S1600 and why it is a camera that
I would recommend to people today.
The first path is to offer a improved S1600
The other path to take would be to offer a costed down X10 in polycarbonate without
all the laser milled metal bits. Dumb down the video requirement (as above) so
that two AA batteries could run it. The optical viewfinder
Extending the battery life: A good target would be 1000
pictures on a charge or about 1/2 of a DSLR. As much as I would appreciate
the extra controls on the X10 (compared to the S1600), I do not expect to
see direct controls for focus mode, exposure compensation, RAW, and AE-L/AF-L.
( The following is taken from an article on the clarkvision.com
site but re-phrased to clarify some of the main points.)
When light streams through an opening (lens or pinhole), light
particles known as photons, can be viewed as heading toward
the sensor. The sensor can be viewed as a grid of square pixels
, each illuminated by icicle of light, spreading from the pinhole
to the edge of the pixel. This angle or arc is half the width
if another imaginary sensor (near sensor) is placed 1/2 way to the pinhole.
This second sensor will be half as wide and half as tall.
